Statement on the Sentencing of Jakhi McCray
On April 8th, 2026, beloved comrade and valued community member Jakhi McCray accepted a non-cooperating plea agreement, acknowledging sole responsibility for burning 11 NYPD vehicles in June of 2025. Jakhi accepted this plea after the prosecution confirmed that they would not seek a terrorism enhancement during sentencing. He now faces a minimum of five years in prison for this righteous and courageous act.
What the prosecution has done with Jakhi’s case is not unique. Plea deals are the coercive status quo under the U.S. criminal legal system, regardless of guilt, responsibility, or morality. The state will charge every offense at the highest possible level, not because the evidence demands it, but because the sentencing differential between accepting a plea deal and losing at trial is so enormous that people routinely take deals to avoid the risk. Terrorism enhancements supercharge this violence. By designating political conduct as terrorism, the government raises the sentencing ceiling so catastrophically high that any plea looks like mercy, and a probable protest charge becomes a decades-long sentence that few would gamble against. The result is a system that produces convictions without ever having to prove its case. This is a feature of the system, not a bug. The lofty plea rate, the high case closure rate, the sheer volume of people processed and punished: these are the metrics the system optimizes for.
Jakhi’s case is a clear example of this vicious epidemic. The state stacked the charges, threatened the enhancements, and made the sentencing exposure so severe that fighting it all the way through trial would mean gambling years of life against a system that was never designed to be fair. We know exactly what was done to Jakhi and why. We reject standards of innocence or guilt where the safety of pig cars is valued above the millions of lives subjected to starvation, torture, and genocide. To the state, human life is cheap — especially Black, Palestinian, and Indigenous life.
This act took place within a specific political context. It occurred amid ongoing protests against ICE, in the wake of documented NYPD violence against Puerto Rican Day revelers, and against the backdrop of ongoing US-Zionist aggression in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon. These are the conditions under which many communities in the imperial core are living: parents detained by ICE in front of their children, families displaced from the neighborhoods they built over generations, young Black and Brown people surveilled, criminalized, and funneled into cages from birth. Organizers are prosecuted for dissent while protesters are met with batons. These are not aberrations. This is the system functioning as designed. And still, people resist — not despite these conditions, but because of them.
We remain steadfast in our support of Jakhi, who has shown great bravery in his confrontation against the state and continued integrity in the face of repression. Jakhi has been grounded with us in the movement since Al-Aqsa flood. The interconnectivity of liberation struggles anchors his politics and sharpens his purpose. He moves from a place of love as action, the belief that to truly live is to resist, that fighting empire is not separate from love but its highest expression. Under house arrest and continued pressure from the state, Jakhi maintained principled political positions. In his July 21, 2025 open letter, he wrote that “repression is the State trying to call our bluff.” Accepting this plea is calling theirs. Not by giving up, but by refusing to allow the state to steal any more of his life away from him.
The movement must hear Jakhi’s words and understand that it is our duty to keep struggling against the state in every way possible. We stand with all those who rebel against the American empire, inside the prison and out in the streets. Like Jakhi, we are committed to anti-imperialism, solidarity with Palestine, and an end to the American empire. To Jakhi and all comrades inside, we send our love and strength. May we win freedom in our lifetimes.